Episode 19 - Elizabeth Holmes

0:15 Welcome back everybody to Two Crime Besties for another

0:18 episode. We're delighted to have everyone

0:21 back for another episode. And I'm just going to give you a

0:24 little heads up really early on in the episode.

0:28 If you're not watching this on Spotify or YouTube, preferably

0:32 Spotify for our numbers, go ahead and do so because Mega's

0:36 actually done something that's a little out of character for her,

0:41 but she's made us dress up for this episode.

0:44 Megan, yes, you did well, I think.

0:45 Because this is your out, your go to outfit for go to work.

0:48 It's totally not my go to outfit, although will I let you

0:53 put that photo of me on social media?

0:55 Yes. Yes you will.

0:57 So just OK, up upfront, we're talking about Elizabeth Holmes

1:01 today, which you would know from the episode title.

1:05 She was the CEO of Theranos. Theranos.

1:09 We'll get to everything about her in a minute.

1:12 But I was at work. Oh, this is probably a good

1:15 couple of months ago. And I was in a meeting with a

1:19 colleague like a, a Zoom meeting, and I was wearing this

1:23 top that I'm wearing now with a blazer over the top 'cause it

1:26 was winter and I was cold. And at the end of the meeting,

1:31 he just sent me a Teams message. And he was like, he goes

1:36 channelling Elizabeth Holmes much question mark, question

1:39 mark. And he'd screenshot me from that

1:42 meeting. And I was like, what?

1:44 And then, I mean, I've known about this story.

1:47 I work in the industry. I've known about this story for

1:49 a long time, but it didn't even. It didn't register.

1:52 No, it didn't register at all. And then so anyway, he then he,

1:57 he sent me this photo of me side by side with, with Elizabeth

2:01 Holmes. And I'm like, I actually see

2:04 what you're getting at. But seriously, bugger off.

2:06 OK, anyway, so if you want to have a look at what Meg and I

2:10 are wearing. Just ignore my polka dots, it

2:12 was the best I could do for a a a turtleneck.

2:15 Well, I clearly had this in the wardrobe and ready to go.

2:17 Well, so yeah, have a look and see what.

2:21 Works. My hair's not messy enough, I

2:23 gotta get it messier for. It but it is straight so you

2:26 went to the hairdresser this week and your ordinarily

2:30 beautifully curly hair has been blow dried and straightened yes

2:34 and so you actually like when we sat down just before I'm like

2:38 your hair looks gorgeous It looks you're really channelling

2:43 you're in a. In Elizabeth Holmes.

2:45 Hang on. Let me channel her a little bit

2:46 more. Hang on.

2:47 Wait, we're really on the cutting edge of technology?

2:51 That's not bad I think. I think I don't even know how to

2:54 make my voice baritone like. Just loud is all you can do.

2:58 Yeah, I can do loud, no worries, just gotta.

3:00 Go deeper. Loud, I don't know how.

3:02 Anyway, we can talk about all this later.

3:04 Anyway, how's your week been? Tell me everything, what's been

3:07 going on? Well school holidays so I've

3:09 been living life, although I was at work all day today so.

3:13 Hi, me too. Yeah, so much for the, you know,

3:16 you get all the school holidays. Well, sometimes we don't, but

3:19 that's all good. Yeah.

3:20 No, I've been busy, but, like, good busy, you know, like I'm

3:24 busy, I guess. Yeah.

3:25 Running around and doing all fun stuff.

3:26 What about you? Well, yeah.

3:28 Well, this holiday gallivanting around, I tell you what.

3:30 Yeah, well, we're back back in, back to reality after our

3:33 holiday. This week's just been sort of

3:36 settling back into work and I don't know, it's been a nice

3:40 week. The kids, as you said, are still

3:42 on school holidays, but they've been, they've needed a few down

3:46 days. So they've had some time at

3:47 home, spent some time with both sets of grandparents, which has

3:51 been lovely. And tomorrow I'm taking them to

3:55 the driving range to let out frustration and energy, and

3:59 we'll see how that goes. That sounds fun.

4:01 It'd. Be good.

4:02 Who's going to? Win on the mini golf.

4:04 Yeah, who's going to win? Who's winning?

4:06 Yeah. I feel like high will totes,

4:09 Yeah. I mean, it's not like I'm gonna

4:10 let them win. I never let them win.

4:12 No, that's not life. No, that's it.

4:18 If anything, my youngest would win over my oldest.

4:21 Really. Yeah.

4:22 My look, my oldest, he's, he's got a an absolute.

4:25 He's really sporty and he loves his sport, but he's more a

4:29 larger ball sport, kind of a kid, like basketball, footy,

4:33 that kind of thing. Whereas Lucas has the patience

4:36 and dedication to a sport like golf, I think.

4:41 Whereas Ollie, you'll just be trying to bash the Jesus out of

4:43 the get started as kept possible.

4:44 Yeah, yeah, get that. Whereas I feel like Lucas will

4:48 take more technique into what he does.

4:51 Anyway, yeah, I'll let you know next week how it goes, if I

4:53 remember. So we were just chatting before

4:58 we hit record. I do have a shout out for today.

5:02 Yes. So one of my so it's funny how

5:06 people have come upon our podcast.

5:10 One of my work colleagues who works now veterinary department,

5:15 a tractor, she came across our podcast, I think through our

5:19 socials, right? And the other day she came into

5:22 my office and she was like, oh, you know, been listening to

5:28 loving it. She loves our banter at the

5:30 start of an episode because we're like, talking about our

5:33 kids and stuff. And her kids are in their, like,

5:37 early 20s. And so that she's sort of in

5:40 that next stage of her life. And she's like, oh, it makes me

5:42 really remember about what things were like when my kids

5:45 were really little. She's gorgeous.

5:48 Yeah. And she was.

5:49 She just had really lovely things to say.

5:51 So thank you. A tractor.

5:52 Oh, that's so sweet, 'cause I'm sure there's people right now

5:55 going hurry up, get through this bit and get to the case like,

5:57 you know, which is, I mean, you can't please.

5:59 Everyone, you can't please. Everyone and I but I love it.

6:01 I think this is good fun. Yeah, Tractor also has the most

6:04 beautiful accent. I just love listening.

6:06 Oh, where's she from? ISLAND, OH.

6:09 Yeah. She's just, she's a gorgeous

6:11 person. But also listening to her talk.

6:14 Love it. Yeah.

6:15 A tractor. You have a voice for a podcast.

6:17 Oh, yeah. Love it.

6:21 That's so good. The other thing I wanted to let

6:24 everybody know about today. We've had a few people reach out

6:27 to us and wanna know how they can support us, whether there's

6:30 something sort of that they can help us with financially.

6:34 We do not expect that at all. We would love it if you are able

6:38 to to like and share our podcast, write comments,

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6:45 And especially if you listen through Spotify, that that

6:48 definitely helps us reach a lot more people or through the

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6:55 reach. But we have also set up this now

7:00 I came across this through another podcast that I listened

7:04 to, but it's called Buy Me a Coffee.

7:07 So our tag for this is it's at buymeacoffee.com.

7:12 Forward slash to crime besties, all one word.

7:15 Yeah. And you're able to donate to us

7:19 if you want to like a $5.00 coffee or there's options for

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7:26 do. And we have 0 expectation that

7:28 anyone is going to want to do this.

7:31 We are doing this because we love it.

7:33 Yeah. And we're investing our time and

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7:40 So if that is something that you feel like you wanna do, that

7:42 option is there. We have, as I said, 0

7:45 expectation that anyone will want to and it's totally fine if

7:48 you don't. But thank you to those who've

7:50 reached out and asked us for this.

7:52 They people have wanted to be able to support us in this way.

7:55 So this is this is a good way. We are also looking at

7:59 potentially doing like a subscription type of thing where

8:02 we can offer extra episodes to subscribers, but that'll be

8:05 coming, you know, in the in the coming months because.

8:09 We have to work out how time wise we can manage that and all

8:11 those sorts of things and what we can offer.

8:13 So yeah, that's a bit more to that.

8:15 Whereas this this is a little an easy one for us to offer people.

8:18 If that's if that's something you're able to and willing to,

8:21 you know, support us in that way would be great.

8:23 But yeah, as I said, like hit that subscribe button.

8:25 That's the that's the best way to do it for us too.

8:27 Absolutely. Yeah.

8:28 Not not expecting, you know, people to send us money, but if

8:31 you'd love to, you know, just caffeine us before an episode,

8:35 that would be. Very well appreciated.

8:37 When I was typing out the description of it, I was like,

8:39 yeah, buy us a coffee or a wine. We've got our wines today.

8:45 We're actually recording tonight on a Thursday night.

8:47 Normally we record on a Friday during the day while the kids

8:50 are at school, and it's all good.

8:51 But school holidays mean that we've had to sort of alter our

8:55 schedule. Yeah.

8:57 So it's a Thursday night. It is Thursday, is it?

9:00 I've lost track of what day of the week it is.

9:02 Yeah, 'cause you're on holidays. Yeah.

9:06 So we're recording Thursday night and I'm like, well, of

9:10 course we'll have a wine or three.

9:13 Yeah, we'll have a glass of wine and we'll have another one and

9:16 I'll top you up. So unlike, I'm gonna do that

9:19 sort of thing, Yeah. It's hours before you have to

9:21 drive home and be fine. I love it.

9:24 It's good, we're having fun. Oh, and it'll it'll make for a

9:27 great podcast, so. Oh, hopefully.

9:29 Let us know what you think, do you?

9:30 Well, I guess when we're a bit free and easy or.

9:34 By the way, you'll get me dressed up, that's for sure.

9:35 Oh. No, you brought your outfit.

9:39 You brought your costume before we'd even had a wine, so don't

9:43 even. Well, I'll have to I'll admit to

9:44 like people out there who can see Emma right now and can see

9:47 the the nice turtleneck and she gets her gold chain out too.

9:50 So when I saw that outfit that very same morning as your

9:53 colleague, I didn't think Elizabeth Holmes at the time

9:55 because I actually didn't know the Elizabeth Holmes story.

9:59 I actually thought The Rock. But anyway, I was.

10:08 Thinking like maybe you'd think Steve.

10:10 Jobs the Rock. There's a great image of him

10:13 when he was. Yeah, yeah.

10:17 That is so funny. All right, should we get into

10:21 today's case? Everyone's probably like, oh for

10:22 fuck's sake, could they just hurry?

10:25 We have somewhat covered some of this case because I'm I reckon

10:28 her appearance is a fair bit of this case.

10:31 Well, it is, and we'll definitely be referring to it.

10:33 Yeah, as we go on. Yeah.

10:36 All right. So let's get into it.

10:38 Elizabeth Holmes. She founded and was the CEO of

10:44 Theranos. Theranos.

10:46 Now we're going to say. So when I, when I read it, I'm

10:49 like, it's Theranos. Yeah, but we're going to be

10:52 saying Theranos because the name was derived from 2 words,

10:58 therapy and diagnosis. So.

11:04 It's really not like it's, I don't know where she's pulled

11:06 that from, to be honest. Well, that's what she says.

11:08 I know that's what she says, but like I just, it's not, that's

11:12 not how I would join those two words.

11:14 No, but she did a lot of things that literally no one else would

11:19 have done. Absolutely.

11:20 Yeah. Let's just start with the name

11:22 of her company, I suppose. Yeah.

11:25 So she was born on the 3rd of Feb in 1984.

11:29 So she's about a year and a half older than me.

11:32 She was born in Washington, DC to parents Christian Rasmus

11:37 Holmes, the 4th. He was a vice president of

11:41 Enron, which is interesting in and of itself.

11:44 If you don't know the Enron story, go and have a Google

11:47 because that that kind of it is an interesting one.

11:51 And her mum was Noelle Holmes. Now, before we got on here,

11:58 I've, I've watched a few documentaries.

12:00 I've watched the dramatisation of this.

12:05 Her name is Noelle. Her name is Noelle.

12:08 I had a dream. Sorry I'm a bit of waitress for

12:13 the day, but her it's spelt Noel, which to me is like Noel.

12:20 But anyway she was a Congress staffer.

12:24 So it working in DCI guess that's a fairly typical role

12:28 that somebody would potentially have.

12:30 She worked in Gov in a government organization and I

12:34 don't really know a huge amount about her employment history.

12:39 I know she definitely supported Elizabeth throughout her

12:41 endeavours and was incredibly proud of her during the time,

12:45 but I don't don't really know a huge amount.

12:49 Elizabeth's great, great, great grandfather was the, I guess

12:59 inventor or the creator of Fleischmann yeast.

13:03 Now, when I looked into this, this was a multi.

13:08 This is back in the like 1800s into the early 1900s.

13:13 Yeah, this was a an incredibly profitable business.

13:20 They earned multi, multi, multi millions of dollars, which I

13:24 believe in today's money would be into the billions of dollars.

13:29 Yeah, but by the time Elizabeth was born, there was none of that

13:33 money left. Did you look into that?

13:35 Not a great deal, just her just yeah, that she sort of yearned

13:41 for that, you know, like that she really was, you know, wanted

13:43 to be get the family back to that I.

13:46 Was gonna say I feel like it was family law.

13:49 And yeah, they, they knew they had this past of being

13:54 incredibly wealthy. There's not a lot of information

13:57 about how that wealth dwindled. No, like, I don't, I don't know

14:00 whether what bad investments were made or whether they just

14:03 spent their money or let it do. I actually don't know.

14:05 But I believe the company still or Flashman Yeast is still in

14:09 existence to this day. Yeah.

14:12 Yeah. It's an interesting one.

14:13 Definitely, yeah. No, I'm intrigued by it because

14:15 I think she and she sort of that that's the what I've found out

14:18 about it more so was the fact that I remember a quote of hers

14:22 is basically from a child, but that she wanted to be a

14:24 billionaire and that someone said to her, oh, you could be

14:27 the president of of, you know, the United States.

14:29 And she said, no, no, the president will want to marry me

14:32 because I'll be a billionaire like it was.

14:34 So money was certainly something that was on her mind, but I

14:37 don't know if it was money as such as more that, more so the

14:39 status of having that money, if you know what I mean.

14:41 Like what came with that? Not necessarily having

14:45 possessions, but more having notoriety.

14:49 It's interesting that you say that because I know that her and

14:53 this is again, skipping very far ahead.

14:55 I know her defence at the end of this when it went to trial, when

14:59 she went to trial, they that was their story.

15:02 Their story was that she was never she never wanted the

15:06 wealth. She never wanted that.

15:08 I disagree with that slightly with some of the research I've

15:11 done, but again, we can get into that later.

15:14 But she certainly, once she had money that it wasn't hers, that

15:20 she shouldn't have been necessarily doing with what she

15:23 did. She was spending that money.

15:26 People didn't know that she was spending the money, but she was

15:29 absolutely spending that money. So anyway, we can get, we can

15:33 definitely get into that. Yeah.

15:36 So she's started, I guess, where do we start this story?

15:40 Maybe when she's in college. Yeah, probably.

15:42 That's yeah, yeah. So from where I sort of step

15:46 into where I sort of started researching from, 'cause you

15:48 definitely went further back into, I guess her, who she is a

15:51 person more than I did. But in 2004 she dropped out of

15:58 Stanford University, so she'd been a sophomore.

16:01 I think that's how they work. It's a freshman.

16:02 Freshman's a first year, Sophomore's like second.

16:05 Year. So she I think she attended

16:07 roughly 18 months worth of her degree, so about a year and a

16:11 half. Yep.

16:12 Yep. So she was studying chemical

16:15 engineering and she'd already, whilst at university had started

16:19 this company called Theranos and she had this grand idea of what

16:23 she wanted to do. And she had actually presented

16:26 it to some of her professors at Stanford University, which is

16:30 highly reputable, particularly in that kind of realm of medical

16:34 and engineering, those sorts of things.

16:36 So she'd pitched it to, pitched some ideas to some of the

16:39 professors there and well, some in particular, one particular

16:42 name named Channing Robertson really got on board with her and

16:46 was absolutely enamoured with her idea and what she was

16:49 thinking she was gonna do. There was other professors,

16:52 however, who completely were like, that's not even possible.

16:56 Getting back to Channing Robertson, just really quickly.

16:58 I mean, he comes up a lot, yeah. There's a lot of characters in

17:01 this story, so we will be mentioning a lot of names

17:03 throughout and we'll try our best to kind of keep track of

17:06 them. But Channing Robertson, So when

17:11 Elizabeth was a freshman, she desperately wanted to get into

17:14 his graduate research program and he basically said that he

17:17 would never take on somebody who was a freshman into his graduate

17:22 program. She was able, look, she, she's

17:25 an incredibly intelligent woman. She definitely had some smarts

17:28 about her, but she had the smarts about her of somebody who

17:33 was educated to a level of a first year college chemical,

17:39 chemical engineer, chemical engineer, like she hadn't, she

17:43 hadn't thought through the limitations of what she thought

17:46 was possible, but he kind of was mesmerized by her.

17:50 She proved herself in certain ways to him.

17:53 She would like, I believe she attended one of his lectures and

17:57 was able to give some context around a problem or something

18:01 that he'd presented to the class that nobody else in the graduate

18:04 program was able to substantiate.

18:07 She she got that. And OK, that's really impressive

18:11 for a first year college student.

18:16 But he kind of that got him that kind of hooked him.

18:19 And then he was in hook, line and sinker.

18:22 Yeah. Yeah.

18:23 Whereas there was a female professor that she was trying

18:26 to, you know, get on board with this, who had far more

18:29 experience in the, you know, realms of, I think it was.

18:34 Micro and it was also microfluidics, this particular

18:37 professor, right, So Elizabeth. Said aware that it just went

18:40 what? Elizabeth's idea to start this

18:44 company, she had this idea of basically being able to provide

18:53 pathology testing to people using a drop of blood.

18:58 That was her whole sort of idea at the start.

19:02 And this particular professor, do you have her name written

19:05 down? I just checked and I don't seem

19:07 to have written it down. Anyway, she she was very

19:10 involved in a lot of things further on as well when the

19:12 company came. Crashing.

19:14 We can actually put her name in the show notes, maybe.

19:17 Yeah. But she also, she basically said

19:20 to Elizabeth at the time. Yep.

19:21 Love the idea. It's really great.

19:24 And I like the way you've thought this through.

19:26 But currently with the current technology that we've got, it's

19:30 actually impossible because Elizabeth's idea was to be able

19:34 to run several 100 assays on a drop of blood in a point of care

19:40 testing device. And that's just not something

19:42 that the technology had at that point developed to be able to

19:46 do. Elizabeth didn't give a shit,

19:52 and she started pursuing sort of.

19:57 So she was based at Stanford University, which is in Palo

20:02 Alto in America. This is in the absolute heart of

20:07 Silicon Valley. Now.

20:08 We're talking around the time that we've had the success

20:10 stories of people like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg.

20:14 We've had Bill Gates come through the ranks before her.

20:18 They were all college dropouts. And she kind of hitched her

20:25 wagon to that train. And she decided at the point

20:32 where she'd been in college for 18 months that she was going to

20:34 drop out because she says she was spending her whole life, you

20:39 know, talking to VCs to venture capitalists to try and gain

20:42 funding for this idea of hers, which, you know, at the time, it

20:49 sounds amazing, But she had no way of kind of figuring out how

20:57 she was gonna meet this end. She just had an idea it.

21:00 Was an idea with no, she had forethought of like, yeah, she

21:04 hadn't yet. Proved that, yeah, that that

21:07 this was even possible. She hadn't.

21:09 She hadn't even gone through that yet.

21:12 What I find really interesting, So I did a bit of a deep dive

21:15 into how VCs work into in terms of venture capitalist house

21:20 startups. And I mean, Silicon Valley, it's

21:22 the home of a startup. Yeah.

21:24 Generally speaking, what would happen was you would have an

21:27 idea, you would have a proven idea.

21:29 You would take that to venture capitalists.

21:31 Venture capitalists would vet the entire thing.

21:35 They would do risk assessments. They would figure out whether

21:37 this is something that they was viable and something that they

21:41 could potentially invest into and decide yay or nay, whether

21:45 we're going to put our money into this.

21:47 A good example is Uber. Yes, so Uber was somebody had

21:55 this idea. They've gone to certain venture

21:57 capitalists, some of them went Oh no, God no, we're not doing

22:00 that. Maybe his very.

22:01 Best mates did. Gary Vee.

22:02 Exactly. Very famously said no,

22:05 unfortunately he just didn't have the the liquid at the time

22:07 to be able to invest. And also, I think they hadn't

22:10 necessarily proven the idea. They went back, they reworked

22:13 it, they've gone to other VCs and they've gained the capital

22:15 that they needed in order to because to a startup in this

22:21 sense costs multi millions, sometimes into the billions of

22:25 dollars. Yes.

22:28 So the difference with Elizabeth was so she was connected to some

22:33 very influential people and influential families just by

22:39 nature of her parents and their roles and responsibilities in

22:44 their jobs and also because of certain family connections that

22:48 they had. It's not what you know, it's who

22:51 you. Know in this case for sure,

22:53 yeah, yeah. But she ended up the The funny

22:57 thing with her was that she actually got, it wasn't VCs that

23:02 invested, it was individuals and private family estates that were

23:07 investing. Yeah.

23:09 So in a typical VC venture, they would be looking at financial

23:16 records. They would need proven data.

23:19 But she kind of talked people into giving her like a lot of

23:24 money. And I'm not.

23:26 Talking like random people. I'm talking incredibly

23:31 influential people by the likes of Rupert Murdoch. 125 million

23:36 he invested. Yep, the fam, the Walmart, the

23:39 family, the world. Yep, they invested, I think

23:42 about 100 million. Was it 150?

23:44 There you go. Yep, the DeVos family Was that

23:47 100 million? Yep.

23:49 Yep. This isn't little money like

23:52 $100 million, and this was out of their private equity.

23:55 Like this wasn't through their businesses.

23:58 This was private money that they were investing into her.

24:01 They drank the Kool-aid. Big time, yeah.

24:04 And I was talking to some people that I knew that were more in in

24:07 that sort of corporate world than I do that look at, you

24:10 know, investments in startups and things like that around

24:13 this. And there is a level of you've

24:15 got to fake it till you make it, OK kind of thing.

24:17 Because you haven't got you haven't got the money to produce

24:20 potentially a prototype or anything like that.

24:22 So you've got to get money about to do that and to be able to,

24:25 you know, get to where you need to have that you've got the

24:27 actual product. So you do have to sort of fake

24:29 it till you make it in that sense.

24:31 But hers was next level. Fake it till you make it like

24:35 there was. Yeah, it's it's there's a point

24:38 where it gets a bit insane in terms of faking it till you make

24:40 it. And that's where she's and she's

24:42 pushed it too far. Well, there's a she.

24:44 She's had an idea, yeah. Which is really far out from

24:48 where reality lies, and she's run with it.

24:51 Yeah, well, 'cause I was gonna ask you exactly that in terms of

24:53 like what her idea was, micro sampling is what apparently she

24:57 was looking at in terms of using this very small amount of of

25:00 blood to be able to do hundreds of tests on that one little drop

25:04 of blood. I mean, I'm all for like, not

25:07 having to have my blood drawn. I hate needles.

25:09 I mean the. Idea of what this is is this is

25:12 what she says is her motivation. Yeah.

25:14 Her mum's scared of needles. She's scared of needles.

25:16 She doesn't like having to have blood drawn.

25:18 Yeah. Look, at the end of the day, to

25:21 me, a vena puncture is a minimally invasive procedure to

25:26 have a venous blood sample drawn.

25:28 But then I look at you and I both have kids who've had to

25:31 have blood tests and it's it's not not something that you

25:34 really want to have to have done for your children.

25:37 I get that. Yeah.

25:39 I mean, I know through. IVF and having blood tests done

25:41 on a very regular basis. I mean, having to go back again

25:44 and again, like it's when you have, when you're having it like

25:46 that especially, I mean, I hate needles, hate them, hate them.

25:49 And so the thought of him just having one blood test, let alone

25:52 having one every couple of days was horrific.

25:55 So the thought of like being able to get that same

25:57 information from a prick on your finger rather than having to,

26:00 you know, go through the vein every time I'm trying to find a

26:03 vein on me is not easy. So it's never fun.

26:06 I pass out regularly doing that sort of thing.

26:10 I mean, you're not. You're not.

26:12 Like as in a lot of people have that same experience as you.

26:15 Yeah. So I'm a medical scientist by

26:18 trade. I work in pathology.

26:20 And so this is like my, This is why this case is just so

26:26 interesting to me because I kind of get it a little bit.

26:32 And look, there are point of care testing devices that are in

26:38 hospitals, even vet clinics, like for animals, there are

26:42 point of care testing devices. And generally speaking, you

26:46 would still need a venous or arterial drawer depending on

26:48 what you're looking at. So you'd need blood taken out of

26:51 the vein or taken out of the artery.

26:55 Cuz is it different? Can you get different kind of

26:58 blood from a finger prick to what you get out of the van?

27:00 Absolutely. Yeah.

27:01 That's what my other question was like.

27:02 What? So the other thing is how you

27:04 collect that sample. Yeah.

27:06 So when you go to A and go and have a pathology test done,

27:10 generally speaking, you you may be for a, for a very standard

27:14 set of tests, you're probably collecting about 12 mils of

27:17 blood. It's not a lot when you consider

27:19 the volume of blood in your body, which is five litres odd

27:22 for an adult. And so it's an incredibly small

27:27 amount of blood that that is actually being taken.

27:30 Yeah, pretty much 12 mils of blood will cover, you know, a

27:34 really wide variety of general tests for most people and

27:38 general screening sort of things.

27:41 Those it'll probably be collected among two different

27:45 types of tubes that have different additives in them.

27:48 Right. And those additives preserve the

27:50 blood and enable the laboratory to look for different things in

27:54 that blood. Yeah.

27:55 So the thing with doing a finger prick is that well, in this case

28:01 for these these Edison machines that Elizabeth ended up, I say

28:05 creating an inverted commas. She what they were doing was

28:11 essentially putting the blood straight from the finger prick

28:14 into a cartridge and inserting that cartridge into the Edison.

28:18 Yeah. Now that's not taking into

28:20 account any anticoagulant that probably needs to be there.

28:24 We don't know that the sample. So when blood is blood is a

28:27 living tissue, and you can very easily damage that tissue by

28:33 like, even, you know, blood glucose monitors for diabetics,

28:36 for example. Yeah, if you squeeze too hard,

28:39 you're gonna actually break all of those red blood cells.

28:42 And that can actually alter results.

28:45 That can change things around. Yeah.

28:47 And so that's kind of like what was going on here.

28:51 I mean, there's, I could talk about this for hours and we

28:56 still wouldn't even get to the bottom of it.

28:59 But basically let's just cut it out.

29:02 The collection of the samples was an issue.

29:04 The introduction of the sample to the cartridge was an issue

29:08 and then the actual tech behind it was an issue.

29:12 So there are point of care testing devices, as I was saying

29:15 that can be in emergency departments and that kind of

29:17 thing. Basically those chemistries,

29:21 you'll have a cartridge, you'll you'll take a venous drawer, you

29:25 will insert mostly speaking, there are certain ones that we

29:28 can do by a finger prick. If you think about the little

29:30 blood glucose monitors for diabetics, they're great.

29:34 If you want an incredibly accurate result, you wouldn't be

29:37 using that to monitor over time. That's absolutely fine.

29:40 Yeah. And you would know if you've got

29:42 a really high reading or really low reading.

29:44 Yeah. But if you wanted a fully

29:46 accurate result, you would go and have a blood test, a venous

29:49 straw at a laboratory to be 100% sure.

29:52 That goes for any point of care testing.

29:55 If say, for example, you get a result that might you like the

29:59 patient is potentially presenting with a certain, with

30:05 certain what like symptoms and the result from point of care

30:12 test might be like, oh, that doesn't really match up with

30:14 what we're seeing. You would actually then go and

30:17 probably send a Sam, a full venous drawer to the laboratory

30:20 to confirm because you never know, a sample can be hemolyzed.

30:23 So as in like blood cells can be damaged during that process.

30:27 Yeah. So anyway, this is probably

30:29 getting really way too complicated for people, but

30:32 there is there are reasons that this just probably wasn't going

30:38 to work and it's certainly one cartridge isn't going to work

30:41 from hundreds of blood tests. Yeah, there are cartridges that

30:44 I think the most that we could do in a point of care is

30:48 probably about 12 different chemistries.

30:50 It's not a lot. Yeah, which I think is what she

30:53 got too. Yeah, she got, I believe that's

30:55 that's about what she got too. And that's using a venous

30:59 drawer, not using a finger prick.

31:01 Yeah, like, as in, you know, a Lancet from your finger.

31:06 Yeah. And what she claimed to be one

31:09 drop of blood. Like na man, na man, na man.

31:15 So I want to hear it because I mean, to me, that's where I

31:17 just, I don't know, this whole thing.

31:19 And we can get to this entirely of like, you know, that people

31:21 were very sucked into this. And I understand on a level of,

31:25 yeah, we'd all have to not have to have needles and regularly

31:27 and all these things that sounds really easy and simple and but

31:31 it ain't. Yeah.

31:33 But let lots of people fell for this.

31:36 Yeah, a lot of people did and I I get why they did because she

31:40 told people right from the get go that they were using her

31:43 technology in places that they weren't.

31:45 Well, yeah, yeah. And very early on she started

31:48 spouting and she had did have someone on the board.

31:50 And again, I can't think of the guy's name.

31:52 We had a guy on the board who was very high up in the defence

31:56 in America and. I've got his name, we've got

31:58 his. Name.

31:59 So she had Jim Mattis. He was a four-star general.

32:06 He'd retired from the Marine Corps at the time, but I believe

32:09 he still had sort of like a bit of a consulting type role within

32:12 the Marine Corps, but he was a four-star general.

32:14 Very well respected and knew his stuff.

32:17 But that's but not to say though still he he in his depositions

32:21 and everything, he said, no, there was no use of this machine

32:24 in the field. He was in talks with people at

32:28 various times of like, well, yeah, when we get the machine

32:31 working that it could be used like that.

32:33 But she was telling people it was in helicopters, it was out

32:38 on the field being used currently.

32:40 It was out there being used and it was not, no.

32:43 No, never. Literally never.

32:45 Never. No, because they actually

32:47 literally couldn't get at work. Yeah, even his profile on the

32:51 website for Theranos had had him written, as you know, had a

32:56 quote from him saying that it was out in the field and stuff.

32:58 Almost like you could, well, why?

32:59 Why didn't he say something and say that's not accurate?

33:03 Or did he not check? He wouldn't have checked, no,

33:05 because. All of the dudes on the board,

33:07 all the dudes were old, old white.

33:09 Dudes. Old, old, rich white dudes.

33:11 Yeah. Funny that.

33:12 Funny that. We'll get to that.

33:13 Yeah, yeah. So, Elizabeth, I mean, this is

33:17 going back. I'm just gonna go back a tiny,

33:19 tiny little bit here. When she was at high school, she

33:24 was interested in computer programming and she actually

33:27 started her first business in high school and she sold AC Plus

33:31 Plus compiler to a couple of Chinese universities.

33:36 I don't know, mate. You're going to have to.

33:38 You'd have to ask. You'd actually have to ask my

33:41 husband. But I think it's got something

33:42 to do with like, putting code together.

33:44 OK, I really. Don't need stuff.

33:47 Peter, you're going to hate this, but I'm sorry.

33:52 Yeah. So she she'd she was quite

33:54 entrepreneurial right from the get go.

33:57 And she was, as I said before, she was intelligent.

34:00 But I think she over well and truly overly like she really

34:07 thought she was a lot better than what she was in 2002.

34:11 That's when she started at Stanford and she was, you know,

34:14 doing a chemical engineering and she did an internship at the

34:20 Genome Institute of Singapore in her freshman year, I think while

34:26 she was in high. Was it when she was in high

34:27 school that she went and did that immersion Chinese language?

34:31 Very much, very keen in learning Mandarin.

34:33 Yeah, she went and did an immersion program in Beijing,

34:35 but that was through the university still too.

34:37 It was like a freshman university, like it was pre her

34:40 entering the university, but she'd already been accepted.

34:43 OK. And so it was I, I get the vibe

34:45 that maybe she was, that was one of her subjects, you know, that

34:48 she was very good at was Mandarin.

34:49 And so this was an immersion program she could go and so.

34:52 Apparently to get into that immersion program, generally

34:55 speaking, it was students who again, who'd already been at the

34:58 university for a few years and whatnot, right.

35:01 But she, and so initially she was denied entering into the

35:06 program, but then she phoned the faculty or whatever and spoke to

35:11 them in Mandarin and they were like, oh, this is actually quite

35:13 impressive. Fine, you can go see.

35:16 Again, though, it's her, like, jumping ahead of herself.

35:18 Like, you know, there's a reason maybe why they were expecting to

35:21 be older. Which, yeah, we'll get to it,

35:24 yeah. So when she was in China on this

35:27 immersion program, who did she meet then?

35:29 Meg. Sonny Belwana Belwani Belwani.

35:32 Sorry, mate. Sorry mate.

35:34 Sunny Belwani, Yes. Ramesh, AKA Sunny Belwani.

35:40 Now he was 1919 years her senior and he was enrolled in the

35:49 program too, because he wanted to learn more Mandarin, because

35:52 he decided that he thought Mandarin was the up and coming

35:57 trade language and something that he wanted to know in the

36:02 preceding years to this, he'd actually sold his software

36:05 business for was it 40 million U.S. dollars?

36:09 Yes. So he'd done very well.

36:11 Like good on him. If I had sold my business for

36:14 $40 million, would I be immersing myself into?

36:18 I'd be immersing. Myself in cocktails and yachts,

36:22 I reckon. Yep.

36:23 Yeah, Yep. I think that's fair.

36:25 Yeah. Could I join you?

36:26 Yeah, Great. Thank.

36:28 You. But no, he, I mean, obviously,

36:30 look, he was driven to do something else.

36:33 He was 3930. How old was he at the time?

36:36 He was 37 at the time. So obviously, I mean, 37, he

36:40 probably thought, well, he could do whatever he wanted.

36:44 He had $40 million under his belt.

36:46 And he obviously decided that this was something he wanted to

36:50 throw himself into and that that program, that's where he met

36:56 Elizabeth. I believe they met in the dorm

36:58 room and they hit it off straight away.

37:03 He was really impressed by her. She was her.

37:05 She was so awkward. I think in in those years

37:07 particularly. I mean, she's a very unusual

37:10 person. Yeah.

37:13 So I mean to find then someone that she felt was an equal and

37:17 was, you know, a good. Conversation.

37:20 He was enamored by her. Like he really, a lot of men,

37:26 older men were really enabled by her.

37:29 You're absolutely right. But he was obsessed by her in a

37:34 way. Like he, he doted on her and I

37:38 feel like he kind of almost took her under his wing to start

37:44 with. Look, whether or not it was an

37:46 attraction that was altruistic or not, well I guess we know it

37:52 probably wasn't in the end. But then I find their

37:55 relationships so weird all. Beyond weird, actually.

37:59 It's in the movie and I, this is, I don't quote it, that this

38:01 is actually something that's factual that was said for that

38:04 reason, because it was in the movie.

38:06 But of what I know of Elizabeth, I feel like this is fairly

38:10 accurate. Maybe it wasn't actually said,

38:11 but it was definitely the vibe of it.

38:12 Yeah. And she said to Sunny, I don't

38:15 feel like other people feel, but I love you.

38:20 Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, there it is.

38:23 There's that, that that's what it is.

38:26 She knew that she felt differently about him, but

38:30 whether or not she had an ability or has an ability to

38:33 love someone, I don't know. I think this plays a lot.

38:38 I think what you're saying now plays a lot into her future

38:42 relationships too, which again we'll get to at some.

38:44 Point, yeah. So she's started this company.

38:48 She's dropped out of Stanford 18 months into a degree, so she

38:52 hasn't actually finished anything she's asked her parents

38:55 to invest into. Sarah knows the the remainder of

38:59 her college tuition money, which I believe was somewhere around

39:02 the 200,000. Dollars.

39:03 A fair bit of money. Can you even believe how much it

39:06 costs to go to College in America?

39:07 I can't even. I mean, obviously there's their

39:10 college system is so different to ours.

39:11 I don't understand it entirely. And Stanford's a very well

39:14 respected university. But still, I mean, I look at

39:17 them like the equivalent here would be say Melbourne

39:19 University, which is very well world renowned, but it's not

39:23 that kind of money to attend. I mean, I went there.

39:28 Yeah, no, so I I don't get it. But yeah, I mean the tuition is

39:33 in just insane. Insane.

39:35 Yeah. And I mean, we've got subsidies

39:38 in Australia for this kind of stuff, and I don't believe

39:40 they've got that in the US. No, I don't.

39:42 Think they've got anything equivalent to like our HECS sort

39:44 of system that we have here, Do they?

39:45 Yeah. I don't know.

39:46 I hope I. Think it is now, but yeah, yeah,

39:48 yeah. So her parents, I think,

39:52 reluctantly agreed to invest it because I think they figured,

39:55 well, she's dropping out. And by this stage, she'd

39:59 actually had some backing from certain financial investors as

40:02 well, but she needed more money. I think she had little bits and

40:06 pieces of money coming through, but she needed a significant

40:10 amount of money to start developing this idea, which was

40:12 to develop a point of care testing device that used a drop

40:17 of blood to potentially analyze hundreds of chemistries.

40:23 She hadn't developed how this was gonna work yet.

40:27 She hadn't. She certainly had no tech.

40:30 She had no hardware to to support what the claims that she

40:34 was making. Yeah.

40:36 And yet she somehow managed to get lots and lots and lots and

40:42 lots and lots and lots of money. From people and also employed

40:47 some incredibly impressive people a lot of Apple ex Apple

40:51 employees because. You know what gets me about the

40:53 Apple employees? So sorry to No, no, sorry to

40:56 interrupt, but what gets me about the Apple employees is

41:01 that she, they a lot of them had shares in Apple that hadn't

41:05 vested yet. Yeah.

41:06 So if they left the company, they'd.

41:08 Lose their shares, They gave that up.

41:10 So the the Apple designer she employed to design the Edison,

41:15 Yeah, she lost 15,000 Apple shares which I believe was worth

41:22 hundreds of thousands of dollars.

41:24 Yeah, I can only imagine how much that would worth.

41:26 Yeah, it's insane. It's insane.

41:29 But they did all like they believed.

41:31 In her but but who vetted it? Who went OK, yeah, great idea.

41:36 Like, I see it, I see it and I'll go, Yep, this is amazing.

41:41 Her her idea was to bring healthcare to the everyman, you

41:45 know, in a country where Healthcare is inaccessible to

41:48 certain people. Her whole thing was this is

41:51 going to be a cheap and easy way for people to access.

41:54 And it was more about preventative diagnostics because

41:57 she used this story about her uncle who had cancer, but he

42:01 didn't find out until it was too late.

42:02 Was that a good? Story.

42:04 I believe so. I think that actually happened,

42:06 yeah. I think that with him, that did

42:08 happen, but it wasn't because of late diagnosis.

42:11 I think he legitimately died of cancer.

42:16 Yeah, but yeah, she fooled people and everyone drank the

42:23 kool-aid. Now let's talk about her voice,

42:25 just real quick. Yeah.

42:28 So there are early interviews with her from when she was in

42:31 college, and she sort of started having this idea, and people are

42:34 sort of starting to listen. And she's got a very normal

42:39 voice like yours or mine, probably not as loud as mine,

42:42 but yeah. But she had this very natural

42:48 female voice. Yeah.

42:50 All of a sudden she starts this theronose and she's all of a

42:55 sudden got a baritone. Yeah, seriously.

43:00 Yeah, this baritone voice and employees of hers have come out

43:04 since saying, yeah, she had this voice and everyone sort of

43:08 commented and it was something really notable about her.

43:11 But there'd come a Christmas party or something where she'd

43:13 have a few bevies and her natural voice would kind of

43:18 swing in like, and she'd catch herself and she'd be like, Oh my

43:23 God, no. Well, Oh my God.

43:26 But yeah, she, she really put on a voice like that.

43:30 Yeah, my mind. What was she trying to portray?

43:33 I think she was trying to portray that she was Steve Jobs

43:35 and that she was a man that she could hold her own in.

43:38 But she relished, OK, but she relished in the fact that she

43:42 was a woman because she was, you know, she was on like one of the

43:46 Forbes, you know, top. She was self-made, self-made

43:51 female billionaire, billionaire. Sorry.

43:54 Yeah, you know, like she she, but.

43:57 At the same time, she was very masculine in the way she even

44:00 sat and held herself. And then there was the clothing.

44:03 I mean, she, she only wore black.

44:06 Eventually this is all like this all came about.

44:08 This wasn't, wasn't who she was when she started this.

44:11 This was, you know, 2006, probably like 2004, she dropped

44:15 out. This sort of really kicked in

44:16 around probably around that 2000 and 6:00-ish mark where she

44:20 started becoming like this character caricature.

44:22 It was like, you know, like it's she's got to become the, the,

44:26 the, the role of this person that's running, you know, that

44:28 this company in Silicon Valley and the CEO founder sort of

44:33 person. It's like, it's like she didn't

44:35 know how to do it. So she was like, well, I'll be

44:37 like Steve Jobs because. He did it, so I know I can copy

44:40 that. Yeah.

44:40 And that's what I think she did. I think she copied what was

44:43 already there because I don't think she actually knew how to

44:46 be that herself. Yeah.

44:47 I think that's where, like, I don't know.

44:49 I said this personality is sort of sort of seeping.

44:52 Oh. Absolutely.

44:54 Like when I was looking into this, like I, I actually

44:58 listened to it was a really short interview with a

45:00 psychologist who hadn't evaluated Elizabeth that face to

45:06 face, but had obviously looked at everything.

45:08 So and was like, well, yes, there were certain

45:14 characteristics in her that point to narcissism, to her

45:19 image was everything. It didn't matter what was going

45:22 on behind closed doors as long as what she was putting out into

45:25 the ether was all great and amazing.

45:27 And she, like everyone loved her and adored her and thought she

45:30 was amazing and thought she was this, you know that.

45:33 Have you listened to that interview where Bill Clinton

45:36 interviewed her? Yes.

45:37 And he said he says to her, tell us how old you were when you

45:41 started your like. Ceremony, Yeah.

45:43 And she goes, I was 19 and like, she's like so proud of herself

45:49 that she was 19 and she did this.

45:51 You know, it's to me, she. Wants that, that's to be her,

45:55 like legacy that, you know, Yeah.

45:56 Someone who dropped out of Stanford, who needs Stanford.

45:59 I'm way better than that. Like Steve Jobs didn't need

46:01 Stanford, Bill Gates didn't need Stanford, Mark Zuckerberg didn't

46:04 need Stanford. So she just figured she did.

46:07 She just wouldn't have. Yeah, but I'm sure there's

46:11 plenty. I mean, I mean, I haven't got in

46:12 front of me, but I can tell you the list of there'll be a list

46:15 of names who have been all the way through Stanford.

46:18 That would be very impressive too.

46:20 Absolutely. Like it's not as if those

46:24 outliers that dropped out. But that's what they are.

46:28 They're outliers. Yeah.

46:29 Because generally speaking, in order to succeed in a field like

46:32 this, yeah, she should have actually probably undertaken a

46:34 medical degree, specialized in pathology, looked into chemical

46:40 engineering, microfluidics, whatever she sort of was, what

46:44 path she was going down. And then maybe she would have

46:46 had the knowledge to go, maybe this won't work.

46:49 Maybe I need to rethink it and have an idea, but maybe?

46:52 She could have cracked something.

46:54 Else totally totally as I. Mean I find it really ironic

46:59 that she called the machine the Edison for this exact reason,

47:02 because Thomas Edison is so well known for having like thousands

47:06 of patents that didn't work. He's he actually was quoted as

47:09 saying I have not failed. I've found 10,000 ways that it

47:13 doesn't work. That's Edison.

47:16 He is. And so then she goes and calls

47:18 her machine that which it's failed way more than $10,000.

47:22 Absolutely. I mean, the way they talk about

47:23 it, they run, they would try and run an essay more than that.

47:27 Like, yeah, they would try and try and try not change anything

47:30 because she just, they wouldn't. They'd just try and try and try

47:36 until they maybe got one that worked or one that kind of got

47:40 there. And then they would hide all the

47:41 data that. That's it.

47:42 They they they would. Cherry picking what worked and

47:45 what didn't like oh look, we got a vitamin D result that was akin

47:50 to that of the lab test. But then they didn't see you

47:54 wouldn't see the other 10 or 100 hundreds actually failed.

48:00 So in terms of a narcissism image, she thought everyone by

48:05 the end everyone was conspiring against her and would bring

48:08 litigation upon those who would actually speak paranoid.

48:12 Like in terms of her security around her and everything like

48:16 that, that she had the lawyer that she brought on board.

48:19 I mean, he was, he was, he's, he's represented Harvey

48:22 Weinstein. That's.

48:23 Gross. The fact that's a woman.

48:25 I mean, I guess back in the day back.

48:27 That would have been after. No, no, I think no, you would

48:30 have. Already done that.

48:31 Yeah. Yeah, right.

48:32 Yeah, Yeah. So Boys was his surname.

48:34 I can't remember his first name. Yeah.

48:36 Yeah. But he, he's an interesting

48:37 character himself. But he was the one who sort of

48:39 advised her of, you know, you need to be protecting

48:42 everything. And she used that to her

48:43 advantage as well, to hide what, that things weren't working

48:46 because she would basically tell anyone who wanted to know more.

48:49 Or we can't share that with you because that would be sharing

48:51 our trade secrets, proprietary information.

48:57 And then like the fact that she portrays this low voice and this

49:00 baritone, that also plays into the narcissism aspect because

49:04 she's putting across something that's not actually her, not

49:08 actually true. Yeah.

49:10 It blows my mind. Yeah, it does blow my mind what

49:13 she actually thought that would do for her.

49:16 And why? Like what?

49:19 Yeah, Exactly what was that going to achieve for you in this

49:23 grand scheme of things? Like, I really don't get it.

49:25 No, at the height of Theranos, it was valued at over 9 billion

49:34 U.S. dollars. On paper, yeah.

49:36 On paper, yeah. But still, I mean, that's,

49:39 that's a legitimate valuation. And her herself was was worth

49:43 4.5 billion. Yeah.

49:45 On paper, yeah. Did you read about how at some

49:49 point, like when the company was kind of starting to, things were

49:51 starting to be revealed and things were going down, people

49:55 were losing their jobs and whatnot, She decided that at

49:58 that time that she'd pay herself an extra $200,000 a year.

50:02 Oh. I didn't.

50:04 Because she needed to fund her private jet.

50:08 Oh, I don't even know she had a private jet.

50:10 Well, I think, I don't know that she owned a private jet, but she

50:12 certainly used a private jet service.

50:15 Is that so her and Sonny could rendezvous without anybody

50:18 knowing? Oh, that's.

50:19 Yolk. I hope not, yolk.

50:21 Because there was the other thing with that their

50:23 relationship. So he came on board and to the

50:24 company officially in 2009. So he came in as well because it

50:29 was things were starting to get questioned already in 2009 so

50:32 much. So the board, we're going to

50:35 oust her as CEO, keep her on obviously because they were all

50:38 still wanting to push on with this.

50:41 But they were basically going that you're not capable of this,

50:43 you're too young, you can't do it.

50:45 So the way she got around that was saying, you know, like, no,

50:48 I understand that. I hear what you're saying.

50:50 So what I've done is I've gone and reached out to my mentor,

50:53 Sunny Botwani, and. Who I'm sleeping with, but no

50:55 one. But no one knows.

50:58 I've reached out to him and he'll he's said that he'll come

51:01 on as COO and also invest 20 million.

51:04 Now just quick. Just doesn't really care.

51:06 Just real quick, he had no medical training, no no medical

51:10 background, he had no pathology experience, no laboratory

51:13 experience, and yet he's coming as the COO.

51:17 Interesting. Yeah, and overseeing the labs.

51:20 Yep. I think that was his role.

51:21 Yeah, that was his role. Just real quick, the board

51:24 members at the time, Henry Kissinger, he was the former,

51:28 probably the most famous former US Secretary of State.

51:32 Yeah, we've already spoken about Jim Mattis, who was the

51:35 four-star general retired from the Marine Corps, George Shultz,

51:40 who was the another former US Secretary of State.

51:44 He also Nixon, Yeah, during the Nixon can exactly.

51:47 Interesting in and of itself. We should do an episode about

51:51 Nixon, actually. I just think so.

51:53 They're like, let's do that one. Yeah.

51:57 He actually lived on campus at Stamford at the time, in in

52:01 residence at the time. We'll also get into certain

52:05 family members of his that are involved in this story very

52:08 soon. There was Richard Kovacevich,

52:12 who was the CEO of Wells Fargo, William Perry, who was another

52:17 former US Secretary of Defense. And they also had William Fogge,

52:23 I think his name is pronounced FOEGE.

52:27 And he was actually a former director of the CDC for the

52:30 Centers for Disease Control in the US So he had a much more

52:35 complex knowledge in terms of like, I guess, process in terms

52:45 of medical things. And yet he also never, never

52:48 questioned. Yeah.

52:49 He was probably the closest to having any medical knowledge.

52:52 Yeah. Whereas the rest of them, you

52:54 would say, yeah, Nah, they don't really know what's going on

52:56 here. But also didn't really question

52:59 any like Elizabeth. It's like Elizabeth would just

53:02 say to them, yeah, yeah, no, this is what's going on.

53:04 And they'd be like, oh, OK, cool, cool, cool, cool.

53:06 Let's keep going with that. Then they.

53:08 Were enamoured with her. It's like they'd never seen a

53:13 beautiful female. Also, be intelligent.

53:17 Which is that what it is? I don't know.

53:18 I don't know what it is. I is that what it is?

53:21 Because what else was going on with these blokes who were just

53:24 like, blindly? I mean, I think there's a

53:27 certain like she obviously had an incredible amount of

53:31 self-confidence and so does that attract people?

53:34 But sorry, does that attract white well men?

53:38 Narcissism. A lot of like what the basis of

53:40 narcissism is really is a lack of confidence.

53:43 So ultimately. But but that is true.

53:48 Yeah. At the end of the day, it was

53:50 all a facade. Absolutely a facade, but they

53:53 bought every. It's so like they were they

53:56 would have done anything for her.

53:57 But she also told them whatever they wanted to hear.

54:00 It's not like she was what? Means would go like for hours

54:02 and hours and hours and she would just talk about.

54:05 What I know? Like, I mean, I think it was.

54:08 Oh God, I mean, Henry Kissinger I saw interviewed around and he

54:12 was saying about the board meetings that he's like, this

54:14 should be a human rights violation, making us sit through

54:17 this. And it was her just talking and

54:19 talking and talking. And she would, but she would

54:22 talk off on topics like, whereas they instead of talking about,

54:25 you know, like, how are we getting over this issue that we

54:27 can't get the Edison machine working?

54:30 It'd become about what are we going to put on the website

54:33 about this topic. Or which videographer are we

54:36 going to use to do our ad campaign?

54:38 Yeah, so she would, I guess it was all about the fact that what

54:41 she was just talking around the actual issues.

54:44 It's all what they're putting out there.

54:46 Yeah, it just blows my mind like why rich old white dudes just

54:52 fell for everything she ever said did and they did because

54:57 she's. Going to say something horrible

54:58 then she like what? Yeah, that's that's virtually

55:03 uncool. Cuz there's another clip of her

55:05 where she cuz she ended up lobbying the Arizona, I don't

55:11 know what you call it like government.

55:13 She wanted to change the law so that people could request their

55:19 own tests for blood tests things rather than waiting for a doctor

55:23 referral prescription to have these tests, which I'd love to

55:27 hear your perspective on that and whether or not it's

55:29 actually, I have some concerns because as a layperson, I

55:34 wouldn't know what a test a blood.

55:35 I mean, I'm going, you know, test my, you know, vitamin C

55:38 levels, but I wouldn't know what the was looking at when I got it

55:40 back. You know I wouldn't be.

55:41 Testing your vitamin C levels. But anyway, what else?

55:44 See, again, I don't know what asking for.

55:46 So yeah, yeah. But I don't know how to

55:48 interpret them and I don't know what I would be asking for, you

55:50 know, like kind of thing. So I don't.

55:51 And then what do you do with the information if you don't have a

55:54 medical knowledge? Like, yeah, I I fully agree with

55:56 that. There are companies in around

55:59 the world where you can jump online and they will allow you

56:05 to order tests through legitimate pathology

56:08 laboratories and you can then get the results through those

56:13 third parties. Essentially.

56:15 Generally speaking, they will have a medical practitioner

56:18 attached to them to view those results, but at the end of the

56:22 day, as a layperson, you're still getting your results with

56:26 not a huge amount of context and not a huge amount of advice

56:29 around them. I don't.

56:33 Think the other side of I sort of look at is like.

56:36 Because you can just Google. Oh, my God, my vitamin D level's

56:38 low. What do I do?

56:39 OK, Vitamin D is probably a little more innocuous.

56:42 Well, yeah. Can.

56:43 God, there's cannot be. Honestly, there's so much nuance

56:46 in this. But that's the thing, it's the

56:47 individual because you know, knowing like what my result will

56:50 be on something compared to someone else's, what might be

56:54 concerning for you might not be concerning for me, like kind of

56:56 stuff. There's still interpretation,

56:58 Absolutely. There's also interpretation

57:01 within reference ranges as well. So you might get something and

57:04 you're like, Oh yeah, that's within the reference range.

57:06 And it's all green. And you're, you know, these

57:08 pretty graphs that these companies produce.

57:12 And you can be like, oh, OK, everything's cool.

57:13 But you might be slowly declining overtime or slowly

57:16 increasing overtime. It still might be within the

57:18 reference range, but without expert interpretation of those

57:21 results, you don't actually know what's actually going on or what

57:25 might be happening. Yeah.

57:27 So at some point, Elizabeth and Sonny have decided that they're

57:34 going to engage with a company to basically get their machines

57:39 out there. Now, at the at this point in

57:41 time, their tech didn't work. They needed more capital.

57:44 They were bleeding money. Like they were literally like I

57:47 think each cartridge was costing them something like 250 U.S.

57:51 dollars so. I think around this time, the

57:53 company was actually bleeding between one and $2,000,000 a

57:56 week. Yep.

57:57 And they had 15,000,000 in the bank.

58:00 So basically they were months away from being bankrupt.

58:04 And that was when they were like, we need to find more

58:07 investors. Yeah, yeah.

58:09 So they went to a few major companies within the US So

58:15 they've looked at Walgreens, which is a pharmacy kind of

58:20 chain, CVS, which is another. So I believe Walgreens and CVS

58:24 are the two major pharmacy chains within the US And then

58:28 they also went to Safeway, which is like a supermarket chain in

58:32 the US and they've basically pitted each other against,

58:36 pitted those three companies against one another just to try

58:40 and fly. I think prior to that they'd

58:42 actually approach approach places like Pfizer and other

58:45 like more medical places. So it just gone.

58:47 Nuts. They went, they went to most of

58:49 the major pharmaceutical companies to be like, we like

58:53 invest in us. This is amazing.

58:55 And they all sort of vetted the vetted it and went, Oh no, we do

58:59 not want to borrow this. This is nowhere near the point

59:02 where we would start investing in this technology.

59:03 So that's where she's pivoted and gone retail?

59:06 Yep. So she's she's then promoting,

59:09 yeah, I get that. But she's then promoting this

59:11 Wellness model as well. So she's like, this is where her

59:15 uncle's experience comes into it.

59:17 And she's obviously using that for her gain.

59:19 But she's basically saying, well, imagine if we could.

59:22 I've actually written down one of her quotes about this, but

59:25 it's like she wants to. Yoda quote is it?

59:28 Sorry, not a quote about Yoda. Why would you think there's a

59:32 quote about Yoda? Oh my God, yeah.

59:33 She had it written all over a wall in her office, her Yoda

59:36 quote that she. Oh, what was that?

59:38 I didn't even know about that. Do or do not, There is no try

59:42 Yoda. Oh.

59:44 I didn't even know that, What a weirdo.

59:46 Oh yeah, she loved a bit of Star Wars.

59:48 We don't know anyone else who likes Star Wars.

59:52 No, thankfully, no, no her. Oh, he'll love that his name's

59:59 made it into this episode. He she.

1:00:03 Now I've lost my train of thought because now all I'm

1:00:05 thinking about is bloody Star Wars, which I've never seen.

1:00:10 Don't judge me. What?

1:00:12 I've never seen it. How have you don't ever seen it

1:00:14 when your husband is like obsessed?

1:00:17 I'm just not that into it. You've got a full life-size R2D2

1:00:21 that wanders around your house and you've never seen it.

1:00:26 We're changing this. Peter's tried.

1:00:30 I've been with him for more than half of my life.

1:00:31 I get this that flaws me that he's never got you to watch.

1:00:35 It I'm just not interested people.

1:00:37 Asking you to watch it for a source.

1:00:43 No, man. No, no, no, no, no.

1:00:45 Just not. Just not.

1:00:46 Interesting. Next dress up is Princess Leia,

1:00:48 you know. Great.

1:00:52 Moving on, where were we? What were we talking about?

1:00:57 We're talking about quotes. Yep, sorry.

1:01:02 Well, no, I just, I'm just, I've completely lost my train of

1:01:05 thought now, and my hair's looking very Elizabeth Holmes.

1:01:09 Yeah. So anyway, she's she's basically

1:01:11 trying to put these Wellness centres into well, So what ended

1:01:20 up so in the end, she had CVS at the end of the day, CVS, Safeway

1:01:25 and Walgreens vying against one another, even though to be fair,

1:01:30 I don't think any of them really were that into it.

1:01:32 But then when they want someone else, that's right, they didn't

1:01:34 want someone else getting into it.

1:01:36 Yeah. And Walgreens actually hired an

1:01:40 really prominent scientist, medical scientist.

1:01:42 He was a an ex laboratory manager for Quest, which is one

1:01:46 of the bigger or in fact, I think they are the biggest

1:01:49 pathology company in the US. And he came out and he came out

1:01:55 to their site in Palo Alto and he was like, right, need to see

1:01:59 your laboratory. And they were like, oh, that'd.

1:02:03 Be breaching like that's actually.

1:02:05 Secrets, that's actually, yeah. And he's like, well, happy to

1:02:08 sign an NDAA non disclosure agreement.

1:02:11 They love those. Oh, they got everyone.

1:02:13 Anyone who went to their bloody premises had to sign one of

1:02:16 those employees. And they're like, until we've

1:02:18 got a signed contract, you can't see it.

1:02:21 And they then brought to the attention of Walgreens, they're

1:02:24 like, well, we actually can't let him in our laboratory

1:02:26 because he used to work for Quest.

1:02:27 So he's probably going to give them our proprietary

1:02:29 information, even though he had at the time, he had nothing to

1:02:33 do with Quest, is what he was a consultant.

1:02:35 He'd well and truly moved on from that.

1:02:37 Yeah, he never got to see the laboratory and evaluate it.

1:02:42 He never got to see the instrument and evaluate it.

1:02:44 When they showed the Walgreens exec what was how the instrument

1:02:53 worked, they actually fudged it. Oh yeah.

1:02:57 So they, the the exec gave their blood samples.

1:03:03 They then went and run them on a Siemens instrument.

1:03:06 So a validated platform that they said they used to validate

1:03:13 their own assays. So they would compare the

1:03:15 results that came out of the. This is what they said.

1:03:17 Yeah. That they'd compare the results

1:03:19 that came out of the Edison, the results that came out of a

1:03:21 Siemens instrument which was FDA approved.

1:03:23 Yeah, the Edison wasn't. And if those results match, then

1:03:28 obviously everything was all cool.

1:03:29 They never got those results to match.

1:03:32 So what they did when the Walgreens exec came in is they

1:03:35 actually they took their blood, they quickly run it.

1:03:38 The little cartridge into the machine going, oh, we better

1:03:40 leave it for an hour because it's got to do its thing now

1:03:42 inside. Even though like the blood would

1:03:45 have coagulated in that time and it wouldn't have worked.

1:03:48 But anyway, that's a completely different story.

1:03:50 But what they actually did was they ran that little sample down

1:03:54 the hallway to the laboratory where they had a Siemens

1:03:57 instrument set up. They ran a traditional essay and

1:04:02 got a result. And they somehow like they

1:04:06 literally. Used to the machines.

1:04:07 Well, I yeah, they literally used like a an interface to show

1:04:13 on the Edison machine a result that hadn't come from the

1:04:17 Edison. Yep.

1:04:21 And so they, like the Walgreens exec were like, oh, look, line

1:04:24 and sinker, I'm in. This is great.

1:04:25 And you know what? As a layperson, yeah, cool.

1:04:31 When you don't know. I mean the guy for who was the

1:04:33 consultant, he recommended staying well away from it.

1:04:37 His recommendation was well and true.

1:04:38 To the end of it, so much so that his wife even said to him,

1:04:42 Are you sure? Like, yeah, I feel like you've

1:04:46 got this one wrong. Like you probably you're gonna

1:04:48 eat shit. Basically when this comes out

1:04:50 and this goes to every Walgreens in the states.

1:04:54 This is actually gonna might be your undoing.

1:04:56 And he was like, no, I'm adamant this is, I can see this doesn't

1:04:59 work. And that's the thing.

1:05:00 I can't be like, you know, you aren't, you're taking a risk,

1:05:03 you know, and it's like, you know, if I don't get do this,

1:05:05 Safeway, you're gonna do it and we're gonna miss out.

1:05:07 Yeah. And I get that risk that you

1:05:08 want to take. Yeah, but Jesus Christ, I'll

1:05:12 push in the boundary in terms of lying about this thing and like

1:05:15 it it. Yeah, to me it seems from like

1:05:18 what I've got from you. Like in terms of what the

1:05:20 understanding of it, just my own sort of knowledge enough to kind

1:05:24 of go this is bullshit like that.

1:05:27 Surely they were clicking and going?

1:05:29 But then I feel, I feel like that's easy to say now, Yeah,

1:05:32 that we know. But maybe, maybe at the time,

1:05:36 but. You have a genuine expert with

1:05:37 you sitting there going, no, no, no, no, this doesn't work

1:05:40 because of this factor, this factor, this factor.

1:05:42 Plus they're not even showing it to you.

1:05:45 You know, like he was reeling off so much information as to

1:05:48 why this was not going to work. And then on top of that, they're

1:05:52 not actually showing us their labs.

1:05:54 They're not actually showing us the machine.

1:05:55 And, you know, and it's working. So they wouldn't open it up and

1:05:58 show what was going on inside. Yeah, they wouldn't they, They

1:06:01 eventually theranose not relented because they asked for

1:06:07 like literally like I think it was more than six months that

1:06:10 they wanted an instrument to have a look at.

1:06:11 Yeah. And when they got the

1:06:12 instrument, there was tamper evident tape all over it.

1:06:15 So they couldn't actually open it up without them knowing it

1:06:18 had happened. And they signed something to say

1:06:20 they wouldn't open the instrument up.

1:06:22 Yeah. So they're like, OK, we're

1:06:24 looking at a box. OK, cool, cool, cool.

1:06:27 It looks the way it looked when we went to Palo Alto.

1:06:30 Yeah, but we can't actually look into it.

1:06:33 So what's the point in there? Yeah.

1:06:37 So what Walgreens did in good faith that this technology was

1:06:42 going to work is they invested around $140 million and I

1:06:47 believe they they piloted 40 sites across.

1:06:52 Was that right 4141? Was it across?

1:06:54 Wellness centres, but they only had Palo, Palo, Palo Alto and in

1:07:00 Arizona, yeah, there's two workplaces where you could have

1:07:02 the the. Did you bring?

1:07:04 Yep. And then there were the other

1:07:06 Wellness centres were venal, vain.

1:07:09 Venus. Venus, thanks.

1:07:11 I don't know the language. Yeah.

1:07:14 So, yeah. But they had these Wellness

1:07:15 centres on the and the idea was that eventually all 82, I think

1:07:21 locations of Walgreens would have Wellness centres and have

1:07:24 Edisons on site being used. And that was.

1:07:27 The role, the anticipation was that there'd be thousands of

1:07:31 them throughout the States and they'd be within 5 miles of any

1:07:33 American eventually. Like as you know, I think this

1:07:36 that was like a 10 year. Yeah, Walgreens are on everybody

1:07:39 corner. Yeah.

1:07:40 And, and, and I think that was the idea that like literally

1:07:43 anyone within 5 miles pretty much, I think it was over 90% of

1:07:47 the population within 5 miles of their house would have access to

1:07:49 an Edison. Wow.

1:07:50 Yeah, yeah. But so they only got to that

1:07:53 many. But I mean, in that time, there

1:07:55 was some horrific things that occurred in terms of results.

1:08:00 So I was looking at, I'm just trying to find where I had my

1:08:03 notes. I wrote about it.

1:08:05 There was inaccurate results included false, false HIV

1:08:08 positive results. Yeah.

1:08:10 False cancer diagnosis. Yeah.

1:08:12 So this one that was false miscarriage.

1:08:17 Indication of miscarriage was picked up too.

1:08:18 Yeah. So she's the the cancer 1 is

1:08:23 huge. There were, I think there were

1:08:25 actually 2 patients that I've looked into that that sort of

1:08:29 had this experience. One of them she had, I believe

1:08:36 she'd had ovarian and breast cancer at this stage she was in

1:08:42 actually she sorry, she had had primary breast cancer.

1:08:46 She was in remission and her doctor was basically as part of

1:08:50 the monitoring ongoing was like, OK, you need to have an

1:08:52 estradiol level done. Do you want to try this new lab?

1:08:56 Like it's finger prick. You know, this poor cancer

1:08:58 patient had been poked and prodded for years and years at

1:09:01 this point. And she was like, Yep, great,

1:09:04 fantastic. So she goes off, has a finger

1:09:07 prick done. She gets a phone call basically

1:09:11 to say that her estradiol level was over 300.

1:09:15 It should have been close to 0 because she she was

1:09:18 postmenopausal anyway. And the nurse at the clinic

1:09:23 basically said to her, look, I'm really sorry, but it looks like

1:09:25 your tumor has reoccurred. She went back to see her

1:09:28 oncologist. Her oncologist is like, look,

1:09:30 let's just repeat this using a traditional laboratory just to

1:09:34 confirm the results. Yeah.

1:09:37 Well, behold. Her estradiol level is next to

1:09:39 0, but she said, you know, for that week and 1/2 that she was

1:09:42 waiting, she was beside herself. Absolutely horrific.

1:09:45 Absolutely. And a similar thing with a

1:09:48 prostate specific antigen for a male who'd undergone treatment

1:09:53 for prostate cancer. Similar experience.

1:09:56 And there was no, it's not like even during the court hearing,

1:10:04 Elizabeth just basically, I don't know.

1:10:07 It's not like she she just didn't care.

1:10:09 No, she basically was like, well, we were trying to

1:10:11 revolutionize the world. What do you do?

1:10:13 Like, things are gonna happen. Bad things are gonna happen.

1:10:15 Yeah. It was similar experience for

1:10:17 like the woman who experienced they.

1:10:20 She had already been through three miscarriages and she'd

1:10:23 finally fallen pregnant again and her again.

1:10:25 Her doctor was like, since you've, you know, had to this is

1:10:27 a risky pregnancy. You need to have regular blood

1:10:29 tests. Let's have it we try this new

1:10:31 Sarah. No, especially no go and get an

1:10:33 Edison 1 so you're not having to go and have the the venal venous

1:10:36 one done. So yeah, it went and did that

1:10:39 and she and it came back saying that her HCG levels were yeah,

1:10:44 had dropped really quickly. And so again, they think, oh

1:10:47 God, no, this is 4th miscarriage.

1:10:49 She ended up carrying that baby to full term and had a baby.

1:10:52 Yeah. But I mean the, that the, the

1:10:53 stress of that alone could induce then a miscarriage.

1:10:58 But she contacted the company to inform them of what had gone on

1:11:00 when it all had finally been sorted out and that she was

1:11:03 fine. And she continued with the

1:11:04 pregnancy. And no one reached out to her

1:11:06 from, from Theranos that to like, you know, apologize for

1:11:09 the, the, you know, miscommunication or

1:11:11 misunderstanding or, you know, the the mishap.

1:11:14 But she was the. Experience of so many patients

1:11:16 who've had complaints. Yeah, yeah.

1:11:19 Yeah, it was so wrong. I mean, that's the thing.

1:11:21 They're basically, you know, they're, they're working on the

1:11:25 plane whilst it's in the air, you know, they're not instead of

1:11:27 like having it, working on it, getting it right.

1:11:29 And that, I mean, you're dealing with real humans here.

1:11:31 This is not the thing you know, and they've put it right out and

1:11:34 there's the public and putting it and testing it on actual

1:11:37 Guinea pigs out in the world. So.

1:11:39 Wrong, according to the whistleblowers in this case,

1:11:43 yeah. A lot of the assays were out by

1:11:46 thousands of percentage points. It wasn't like 10%, which even

1:11:50 that, I mean, you know, in terms of pathology testing, you want,

1:11:54 you want things to be tight and, you know, well controlled and to

1:11:58 know that what you're putting out is legitimate and you're

1:12:02 giving patients and their doctors the right information to

1:12:07 then inform treatment. Yeah, this was thousands of

1:12:13 percentage points out on a regular basis.

1:12:16 Yeah, yeah. They were doing quality controls

1:12:18 that they would then just like they'd hide the evidence of it.

1:12:22 Yeah. And it's disgusting practice

1:12:26 like and the fact look, OK, working in pathology.

1:12:31 OK, That's that's I've got a a different lens potentially, but

1:12:36 Elizabeth had never worked in a path lab before.

1:12:38 She'd never worked and known how important this stuff is to get.

1:12:46 I mean, as a human, you would know this is really important to

1:12:49 get right, but just how tight these controls need to be.

1:12:52 She had no lived experience with that.

1:12:54 She was. Her hubris got her.

1:12:56 Like, she just thought she was better than all of that.

1:12:58 But this is the thing. It was like she put out there

1:13:00 that she was altruistic, but ultimately she wasn't no, like,

1:13:04 at all. Yeah, yeah.

1:13:07 So by 2016, basically there was a well Walgreens were like, this

1:13:13 is not on. And they start, they shut down

1:13:16 all of their Walgreens stores and started pulling out all the

1:13:19 Wellness centres. And so that was that for the,

1:13:23 for, for, for the Wellness centres and for the for the

1:13:28 machines themselves be out in the world being used on humans.

1:13:31 Yeah, so in the background of all of that was the Wall Street

1:13:36 Journal article that was being written.

1:13:38 That was what was sent, was brought out, was also another

1:13:41 article by, oh gosh, what was his name?

1:13:44 John Carrie Roo. Harry Roo.

1:13:46 So. He was of the Wall Street

1:13:48 Journal. Yeah, he was the Wall Street

1:13:49 Journal. So he, his article that

1:13:50 eventually came out with the whistleblow blowers who came to

1:13:54 him, which we can get into now, you know, really basically blew

1:13:59 it all up. So this was sort of, yeah.

1:14:02 In 2016, John had a number of people come, had heard on the

1:14:06 Grapevine that things weren't great, that there are nothing

1:14:08 that was something was going on. And he was trying to get people

1:14:12 to speak up, but they were terrified because she was so

1:14:16 paranoid. She had anyone who had raised

1:14:19 concerns with her. She immediately fired them.

1:14:20 And I mean, we should also speak about that in terms of Sunny

1:14:23 Bahwani as well. He was well known within the the

1:14:26 company for being a bully. They call him the Enforcer.

1:14:29 Foresight. Yeah, that's right.

1:14:31 Yeah, he was awful like anyone that would approach him and say

1:14:34 hey this isn't sounding right. I think we might need to re look

1:14:37 at this. He would just go nuts if he

1:14:40 didn't fire them. He that would, you know,

1:14:41 relegated somewhere else or should we touch on the poor boy

1:14:46 who? Yeah.

1:14:47 I think that comes a little bit after this.

1:14:49 So yeah, it's worth worth talking about though.

1:14:52 Yeah. So there were three main

1:14:55 whistleblowers within the organ. Well, OK, so there were two to

1:14:59 start with, and then a third came later after the incident

1:15:03 that you were just alluding to then.

1:15:05 Yeah. So the first was Tyler Schultz.

1:15:09 Now, he was the grandson of George Schultz, who we've

1:15:14 mentioned previously as a board member.

1:15:17 He was the former US Secretary of State.

1:15:19 He was the one who lived on campus at Stamford.

1:15:22 He invested as well in Theranos. And he thought, Elizabeth, he

1:15:29 thought the light, Oh yeah, the sun shone out of her.

1:15:32 As far as a daughter, basically she was she was at their house

1:15:35 pretty much every weekend for brunch.

1:15:36 Yeah, yeah, he it was. He was again enamoured with her.

1:15:41 Yeah. Absolutely.

1:15:42 And so George had asked. Well, my, my grandson's just

1:15:45 done a biochemical engineering degree.

1:15:50 He's looking for a role. And, and at this point, Tyler

1:15:53 was like enamoured with Elizabeth as well, because he'd

1:15:55 heard everything his grandfather had said and he.

1:15:59 Apparently like, you know, met her these days, I think his

1:16:01 grandfather invited into the conversation and said, you know,

1:16:03 come and meet Elizabeth and and he was so he apparently was so

1:16:07 like taken with her and how she would talk about what she was

1:16:11 doing that he was like, I want to be involved.

1:16:13 He's like, and he asked her, can I do an internship?

1:16:15 Like do you take your turns? Yeah, I'll, I'll.

1:16:17 Do anything he wasn't like, looking to come in at, you know,

1:16:19 exact level or anything like that.

1:16:21 He was like, oh, I just want to be part of this.

1:16:23 It sounds fascinating. And yeah.

1:16:26 And with what background he had, yeah.

1:16:28 So he was like, he was brought in as like an intern basically,

1:16:30 and working in the lab. So yeah, very low level.

1:16:34 Yeah, I think it's like an A lab assistant or a lab or something

1:16:36 like that. Yeah.

1:16:38 And at that time, he actually met a woman who was an

1:16:44 incredibly intelligent woman. And she's like, I, I rate this,

1:16:48 this woman very, very highly. Her name is Erica Chung.

1:16:54 She was, I think she graduated like top of her class.

1:17:00 She did a similar degree she'd done by.

1:17:03 She did a double degree, I think actually in holistic.

1:17:05 City, she was quoted saying. I saw that it looked really

1:17:08 difficult doing chemistry and biochemical engineering, so I

1:17:11 thought I'd have a go at that. Yes, like, oh, she's, she's so

1:17:15 intelligent and cool. Like, she's really cool.

1:17:20 Funly enough that I have to say, drawn to like Elizabeth on.

1:17:23 She thought she was super cool and thought that she was so

1:17:26 intelligent and. But she also looked up to her as

1:17:28 a female in the field because it is, I guess potentially,

1:17:33 especially in Silicon Valley when you're looking at startups

1:17:36 and that kind of thing. Yeah, it's a male dominated sort

1:17:39 of field potentially. And she looked up to Elizabeth

1:17:43 as a young female entrepreneur who had these amazing ideas.

1:17:48 And so she also, she had her selection of jobs at the end of

1:17:54 her degree, but she decided to go and work at Theranos.

1:17:58 That's where she met Tyler and over, I think they were there

1:18:02 for a couple of years. Was it or about a bit over that

1:18:05 long? Yeah, actually, I think Erica

1:18:06 was there eight months. I think it wasn't even 12

1:18:09 months. Actually, it wasn't long.

1:18:10 It didn't take the long to work out this was not what they

1:18:13 thought it was. No, and they were being asked to

1:18:15 do things that basically they were not comfortable in doing.

1:18:21 And when they raised concerns that eventually got to Sunny,

1:18:26 they were absolutely reprimanded.

1:18:29 Yeah, yeah. They're basically like, stay in

1:18:31 your lane, do your job, don't question what we're doing.

1:18:35 Yep. Yep, blah blah blah.

1:18:37 Yeah, well, Tyler as well, because he had that personal

1:18:40 relationship with with with Elizabeth and was she was in his

1:18:44 home, his grandparents home and things like that.

1:18:46 He had a conversation with her personally and like to try and

1:18:49 suss out, well, do you even know what's going on that this is not

1:18:52 working? And, and he put it to her of a

1:18:54 few things, and he worked out that yes, she knew 100.

1:18:56 Percent she knew she. Knew and so that was when he was

1:18:59 done like it was like he was I think he was on the fence in

1:19:02 terms of like look, if this is all happening beyond her and not

1:19:05 and that she didn't understand this that maybe him bringing it

1:19:08 to her would be like, oh, change will happen.

1:19:10 But when he worked out that, no, she was fully aware and that

1:19:13 there was not gonna be any change, that this was how it was

1:19:15 being run and that was that, he was like, Oh, no, stuff this.

1:19:19 And this is where he and Erica who worked closely together.

1:19:22 Yeah, decided to whistleblow because they were like this

1:19:26 can't keep going on. There's trying to silence us.

1:19:29 We'd have nowhere else to go. Tyler did go to his grandfather

1:19:34 and tell him about it and he basically shut him down.

1:19:37 So he. This is brave as anything.

1:19:43 He's gone and spoken to to John Kerry Roo from the Wall Street

1:19:49 Journal. Knowing that he was compiling

1:19:51 this already. He kind of reached out to

1:19:53 certain people within the organization and he was

1:19:57 basically a whistle blower along with Jerry, along with Erica at

1:20:01 the time. And the first article that came

1:20:06 out from John Kerry Roo was? It was a bomb.

1:20:12 It was a big bomb, yeah. And the next day, Elizabeth came

1:20:16 out. This is one of her very famous

1:20:19 quotes that I'm sure if you Google her.

1:20:22 The next day she was interviewed on one of the morning talk

1:20:25 shows, I think it was. And she said this is what

1:20:29 happens. First they say you're crazy,

1:20:31 then they fight you, then you change the world.

1:20:34 Sorry, first they soon. And she's like, she really,

1:20:41 she's like always nodding and like, really trying to get

1:20:44 people on board and people to, like, emulate her behavior.

1:20:47 And there's no truth in any of what she's saying.

1:20:50 And she knows that at the core. Yeah.

1:20:52 Anyway, as time went on, the articles came out more and more,

1:20:58 and it was pretty bloody evident to everyone by the end of this.

1:21:02 To most people, yeah, not to everyone, to most people, that

1:21:06 this was an absolute farce and everyone had been taken for a

1:21:09 ride and investors had lost their.

1:21:13 I think in the end, I think their investment takings was

1:21:17 somewhere in the $5.8 billion mark.

1:21:22 Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's insane.

1:21:25 Wow. Yeah, God, yeah, yeah.

1:21:29 And they had literally nothing to show for it.

1:21:32 Oh God, yeah. So yeah, in 2016, I'm just

1:21:38 checking what I've got here. Sorry, 2015.

1:21:40 Even when the Wall Street was when the Wall Street Journal

1:21:43 article came out. Yeah, she sort of basically

1:21:47 again, tried to pivot rather than like, shut it all down.

1:21:50 She still stuck to her word. No, no, like that's all wrong.

1:21:53 It's all false. She kept, you know, really

1:21:55 digging her own grave a bit. And yeah, she's she made

1:21:58 comments at this time that really did come back to buy her

1:22:00 in the ass because she really sort of dug down and was like,

1:22:03 no, like my machines are in, you know, in helicopters out in the

1:22:07 field. And like she really went into.

1:22:08 It which was never true. Never true.

1:22:11 And kept saying about this, you know, this few drops of blood

1:22:14 and things like this are going to be out of what I can test on.

1:22:15 And we can test up to 300 hundred, you know, tests.

1:22:18 Yeah, Yeah. So the actual the actual quote

1:22:22 that you came out with as well was that she called the the

1:22:25 journal's reporting factually and scientifically erroneous.

1:22:29 So just like. Her tech?

1:22:32 Yeah, so. But anyway, the next day she

1:22:34 halted all blood collection vials for all the herpes tests

1:22:38 due to pressures from the FDA, because that was the only test

1:22:41 they actually had FDA approval, FDA approval for.

1:22:44 I can just imagine them all in that office yelling at, you

1:22:46 know, we've got herpes so exposed they actually got one

1:22:51 out of the 300 they wanna do and they they got herpes.

1:22:54 Well, she actually promised to her investors that she would get

1:22:57 over 1000 analytes working off a drop of blood.

1:23:01 Yeah, yeah. That was that was her big

1:23:03 picture promise, and they could barely get one.

1:23:11 Yeah, buddy. Hell, I think it was a week

1:23:16 later after the, after the journal article in Laguna Beach.

1:23:21 Yeah, was when she, we know what we're doing and we're very proud

1:23:24 of it, was what she stated. So she was doubling down.

1:23:30 But amid the criticism thoroughness, they actually did

1:23:33 a massive shake up of the board and they eliminated Henry

1:23:37 Kissinger and George Schultz as directors.

1:23:41 They moved them to a new board of councillors, and the company

1:23:45 also formed a separate medical board.

1:23:47 So I guess it was kind of like to show, trying to show that

1:23:49 they were doing something to make changes to improve what

1:23:52 they were doing. Yep.

1:23:54 But it wasn't changing the fact that this tech didn't work.

1:23:57 Yeah, like ultimately. Can we just really quickly get

1:24:01 back to the laboratory director? Yes.

1:24:05 What was his name? I'm just looking it up.

1:24:08 Sorry. But anyway, he we'll talk about

1:24:11 him. I'll get his name in a second.

1:24:13 He basically knew that this wasn't going well at the start

1:24:19 of his relationship with Sarah Nose.

1:24:21 He actually had quite a, a significant relationship with

1:24:25 Elizabeth and as time went on that really became distant and

1:24:28 he never even got to see her. They basically left him in his

1:24:32 laboratory basically like forced him to stay down, you know, in

1:24:37 the depths of, of the, of the building and work on the assays.

1:24:42 And he had less and less contact with Elizabeth over time.

1:24:47 And he ended up basically, I don't know, it got to the point

1:24:53 where he said to Sonny, this isn't working.

1:24:56 Like we've got to look at something else.

1:24:58 We've got to do this XYZ and Sonny's like just get it

1:25:00 working, blah, blah, blah. Well.

1:25:01 He started telling them too, that well, there's people coming

1:25:04 in the building, you are not to be seen because we don't want

1:25:07 anyone coming and saying that we're doing this, what we're

1:25:10 doing in here isn't working like.

1:25:12 And so they became very obvious that to him that the execs were

1:25:17 basically hiding what was happening.

1:25:20 Yeah, because they they, they knew it wasn't.

1:25:22 Right. They knew it wasn't right, and

1:25:23 they was. Hiding his name was Ian Gibbons

1:25:25 Gibbons. So he was.

1:25:28 So when all this came out and investigation started happening

1:25:32 around Theronos and what was actually going on, he.

1:25:37 So he was the chief scientist and laboratory director of

1:25:41 Theronos, and he received a subpoena to basically testify as

1:25:49 to just the truth. Yeah.

1:25:50 But in himself, he knew that the truth would go against

1:25:55 Elizabeth. And he obviously still held some

1:25:58 kind of respect for her. He.

1:26:01 Also just well, he really didn't wanna lose his job.

1:26:04 He, he was older, he'd had, he'd survived cancer already and had

1:26:10 some severe medical issues. So he was really concerned that

1:26:14 he needed to work and earn money as we all do.

1:26:19 But if he went against what I mean, if he basically went and

1:26:22 did the right thing morally that he wanted to do and speak up and

1:26:24 be honest, he would have lost his job and that he was just

1:26:29 would have just destroyed him because he was passionate about

1:26:31 what he was doing too. He was too.

1:26:33 Sure. He, he was one of someone that

1:26:35 obviously he always said we're going to get this.

1:26:38 We're 10 years away. We're not, we're not six months

1:26:40 away like Elizabeth keeps wanting to be.

1:26:42 But we, we're 10 years off. But we, I want to work this out

1:26:45 and I'm going to get it. He was determined, but he

1:26:48 sounded like an absolutely brilliant and beautiful

1:26:51 gentleman. Yeah.

1:26:54 Absolutely tragic though. So the night before he was due

1:26:57 to be deposed, he took an overdose of paracetamol along

1:27:04 with a huge amount of alcohol. She'd been increasing his his

1:27:08 alcohol intake. Building up to this, he'd been

1:27:11 drinking a lot more than usual. According to his wife, yeah, she

1:27:15 found him. He ended up going to hospital

1:27:18 and I think 5 or 60 actually, sorry.

1:27:22 It was nine days later he passed away.

1:27:27 Elizabeth and Sonny were informed of his passing and

1:27:31 according to his wife, did nothing.

1:27:34 They never rang, they never sent flowers.

1:27:37 Nobody from Theranos aside from his friends attended the

1:27:40 funeral. He was really well respected

1:27:43 amongst his team and I believe they all supported yeah the

1:27:47 family and and did all the right things, but no one from the

1:27:49 executive team at Theranos and certainly not Elizabeth or

1:27:54 Sunny. Even HR I don't think did

1:27:56 anything. They basically sent an e-mail to

1:27:58 his wife the day after she informed them that he'd passed,

1:28:02 saying he need they that she needed to return any theranose

1:28:07 like laptops confidential information otherwise she

1:28:11 otherwise did we sue? Her, I know she went and like

1:28:14 delivered it to the she went and delivered it to them.

1:28:16 They didn't even come to the house and collect it for her.

1:28:19 In that scenario. When I heard all that, I was

1:28:21 like, that is utterly disgusting.

1:28:23 Yeah, I would have just told them to shove it as far as you

1:28:26 can. You can go and get.

1:28:28 No way. Yep.

1:28:29 So when when I was thinking about this case and I'm like,

1:28:33 oh, we've never done a a case where like so far we've never

1:28:37 really done a case that's not based around murder and death

1:28:42 and that kind of thing. But I'm like, when you look at

1:28:44 Ian, absolutely she. Like sure.

1:28:48 Elizabeth has blood on her hands.

1:28:50 I well, she does absolutely. And she could have had a whole

1:28:52 lot more on her hands if she'd let these devices be used on

1:28:56 even more people, to be honest. But I mean, these results could

1:28:59 have, you know, these inaccurate results could have resulted in

1:29:02 many people. And we don't.

1:29:03 I guess we don't necessarily know like out of the 40 odd

1:29:08 sites that we're using these devices, like how many people

1:29:13 did get inaccurate results within it enacted upon that we

1:29:15 don't OK, maybe there weren't, you know, catastrophic outcomes,

1:29:20 but you know, we you just don't know.

1:29:23 Yeah, yeah, it could have. It could have ended really

1:29:25 badly. I mean, thankfully, I don't

1:29:27 think that was they were doing the, the test they would, they

1:29:31 were able to achieve off what they were doing weren't going to

1:29:33 cause, you know, terrible outcomes.

1:29:36 I guess maybe could have though. It's, I mean, if it's been gone,

1:29:40 not even gone on any longer, it could have been way worse,

1:29:42 that's for sure. Yeah, for sure.

1:29:44 I'm just really conscious of the time 'cause we've been going for

1:29:46 a while, but let's just really quickly wrap up with the trial.

1:29:50 I mean, there's a, you know, guys, as we say always, there's

1:29:53 so much information out there. There's a really great long form

1:29:56 podcast called The Dropout which you can go and listen to.

1:30:00 There's a a dramatisation by the same name with Amanda Safe save

1:30:06 save Yeah. Who plays Elizabeth Holmes.

1:30:09 She does an amazing job. Absolutely.

1:30:11 Go and check that out as well. That's yeah, yeah, that's a

1:30:13 really. Good series.

1:30:14 A documentary that I watched was called The Inventor, which was

1:30:17 really great too. Like, so you get a lot more of

1:30:20 well, her and her voice and yeah, yeah.

1:30:23 So there's that's really interesting too, because that's

1:30:26 see the real people. And if you're looking for a

1:30:28 really quick little adjunct or like addition to what we've been

1:30:33 talking about today, there's a 2020 story about this that goes

1:30:37 for a bit over an hour. You can find that on YouTube

1:30:39 also really, really informative. So Elizabeth and Sunny break up

1:30:46 around the time that Theranos is dissolving.

1:30:49 Over the course of the next couple of years, when litigation

1:30:52 is coming to light against Elizabeth and against Sunny and

1:30:58 Theranos. I guess at, you know, it goes

1:31:00 from being a $9 billion valued company over the course of the

1:31:05 10 years of of that time to basically being worth 0.

1:31:09 Actually nothing. Yeah.

1:31:10 Literally a zero net worth. Yeah, according to Forbes.

1:31:13 Yeah, Forbes Real Value waited it to 0.

1:31:16 Yeah, In that time, Elizabeth has established a relationship

1:31:23 with a man named Billy Evans. He's a hotelier.

1:31:26 Yeah, they have gone on to have two children.

1:31:31 They have a son named William. Gorgeous name, love it.

1:31:35 Then they have a daughter named in Victor, Victor Inv.

1:31:39 So we love a good spelling on this part, Invicta in Victor.

1:31:46 In Victor, Yeah, let me find it. Because there's a meaning behind

1:31:49 in Victor. Always there.

1:31:51 Of course there is. Now, just while you're finding

1:31:54 that, I'm just going to mention the timing of her two

1:31:57 pregnancies, because I don't believe anything Elizabeth does

1:32:01 is not calculated. Her first pregnancy was

1:32:04 announced right before her trial.

1:32:06 So she was convicted in the end of four counts of defrauding

1:32:16 investors. Yes.

1:32:19 So her first pregnancy was announced just before she went

1:32:21 to trial. Her second pregnancy was

1:32:23 announced just before sentencing, after she was

1:32:27 convicted. So that's very interesting

1:32:29 timing. Yeah.

1:32:30 At her. Have you got the Oh?

1:32:32 Yes, yeah, Her second child, a girl named Invicta, which is

1:32:36 Latin for invincible or unconquered.

1:32:42 Yeah, those poor. Kids.

1:32:45 Those poor, poor kids. Absolutely.

1:32:49 Elizabeth being convicted, she was eventually sentenced to 11

1:32:56 and a quarter years, or I think it was like 137 months or

1:33:00 something like that, 130. Seven months.

1:33:02 I actually looked her up on that because you're actually going,

1:33:03 here's the website you can go to I saw.

1:33:05 That. Yeah, so she's due to come out.

1:33:08 It was July 2032 is her release date currently, but apparently

1:33:12 that can keep getting chipped away out with good behaviour and

1:33:15 all sorts of things. Yeah.

1:33:16 So she was really originally sentenced to 11 and a quarter

1:33:19 years, 11 years, three months, that by the time even the

1:33:26 sentencing came about that had actually been reduced by almost

1:33:29 two years to nine years and 9 1/2 years or something because

1:33:34 of good behavior. Now, what I found interesting

1:33:37 was she was sentenced to prison in a federal prison and there is

1:33:42 no opportunity in the states for parole in a federal prison,

1:33:46 right? So she won't get paroled.

1:33:49 She'll get out when she gets out and that's it.

1:33:50 But there is no opportunity for all, no.

1:33:54 So what about when like so she comes out?

1:33:56 Can she own a company? Can she be a CEO?

1:33:58 She's got 10, a 10 year exclusion period, right?

1:34:01 That was part of her sentence. Even that doesn't seem.

1:34:03 Enough. It doesn't.

1:34:04 It really doesn't. Because like somebody like her

1:34:08 who thinks she's she, she thinks she's amazing and she thinks

1:34:12 she's got all these amazing ideas.

1:34:14 I wonder whether she's just going to, I don't know, within

1:34:17 10 years, try again. So through different avenues and

1:34:20 try again. Well, she's such an interesting

1:34:23 character. I mean, so Billy, her new

1:34:25 partner, he's how many years younger than her?

1:34:28 Like 10 years younger than her. Just under 10, I think.

1:34:30 Yeah, I'm. Just I'm fascinated by that in

1:34:32 that she's gone from Sunny, who was nearly 20 years older than

1:34:36 her. She's like doing life backwards

1:34:40 or something, I don't know. And now she's the Her new

1:34:43 partner's 10 years younger than her.

1:34:46 And she's, yeah, her, her demeanor is very different

1:34:49 around, I mean, I guess walking into the courtroom and stuff,

1:34:52 she's like holding both of these, like holding her hands

1:34:55 with his hand with both of her hands.

1:34:57 And she's very sort of making herself really little.

1:35:00 Yeah, And she's got her mum holding her and everyone's

1:35:04 embracing her. It's like it's a show.

1:35:07 It's. Oh, absolutely.

1:35:08 It's a show. Yeah.

1:35:09 She has just, like, actively and knowingly deceived people in

1:35:15 terms of money, healthcare, like she deserves every month of the

1:35:20 sentence she got. Yeah.

1:35:23 Her defense, though, this is interesting.

1:35:27 Yeah. Her defense basically was that

1:35:30 she was under the coercive control of Sunny, yes, and that

1:35:34 she had no choice but to act the way she did because Sunny.

1:35:40 It was all Sunny's fault. He went to trial separately to

1:35:43 her Which? Because that was all to separate

1:35:46 the two of them in terms of the trials.

1:35:47 Like, I don't know how much of A defense in terms of her actual

1:35:50 trial, it was used. I think it was, but it was it

1:35:53 was, but it was also more so the beginning of of this was to

1:35:57 separate the two trials. Yeah.

1:35:58 And that was again, it was all tactical to basically mean that

1:36:02 she can her trial went first. She could bag him endlessly, you

1:36:07 know, and like there's and he's then got to have his trial after

1:36:10 the fact still to go out like without follow it all, which is

1:36:14 horrific. But yeah, I mean, look, I don't

1:36:17 think he's, he's certainly got a role to play here, that's for

1:36:20 sure. I don't think he's he's innocent

1:36:22 by any means. Yeah, but I don't think she's in

1:36:25 any way innocent. I find it interesting that he

1:36:27 was, his sentence was greater than hers.

1:36:29 So I believe the sentencing they, the judge could have given

1:36:33 them both a maximum of like 14. Well, I think given precedent,

1:36:38 right, it was around 14 years. OK, Elizabeth got the 11 and a

1:36:41 quarter and Sonny actually 12 years and 11 months.

1:36:45 Yeah, so he's not actually due for release until the 1st of

1:36:48 April in 202034. Yeah, right.

1:36:52 OK. So he's got a fair whack of

1:36:54 time. He's got a fair whack of time in

1:36:55 there. They've only both just really

1:36:57 started their sentences well. Name, yeah, I mean it's

1:36:59 particularly with her weight, I mean holding off.

1:37:01 She basically gave birth I think in the April.

1:37:03 Yeah. And then, yeah, and then, then

1:37:06 surrendered herself in the May May of 2023.

1:37:08 They've only just started to see their sentences, you know, get

1:37:12 started on it. So her little kids won't even

1:37:15 know her by the time she comes. Out, I mean, I'm guessing behind

1:37:18 glass basically they'll yeah, but that's no way.

1:37:21 I mean, the trauma that will inflict on them, you know, the

1:37:23 ongoing effect of all this will be untold for many years, I

1:37:27 think. Absolutely.

1:37:28 I'm sure we won't. It won't be the last we hear

1:37:30 from here, I wouldn't think. I don't think so no watch this

1:37:33 space. I guess we say that a lot, but

1:37:35 it is true like so much more can potentially come out.

1:37:40 I I think we'll leave it there. There is a lot to this story

1:37:43 that we haven't been able to cover in this episode and this

1:37:46 is one of our longer episodes. So there is plenty plenty more.

1:37:50 If you want to have a look, we'll put some links in our show

1:37:53 notes, but please leave us comments about what you think.

1:37:58 We're really keen to hear people's take on this because

1:38:02 there are certainly people to this day who still support

1:38:04 Elizabeth and think she's done all the right things.

1:38:06 And she was an innovator and she was taking risks, and that's

1:38:09 what we need to make progress. I don't see it that way, and I'm

1:38:13 guessing you don't either. Nope, Nope.

1:38:15 OK, so look, just wrapping it up really, really quickly.

1:38:19 Thank you to everybody for joining, forward to seeing you

1:38:21 again next week for sure. No more Elizabeth Holmes, get up

1:38:26 next week. No promises.

1:38:28 You love this outfit. You're gonna bring the voice.

1:38:32 In too, you know it. That sounds more Rock I.

1:38:36 Reckon all right, Stay curious. Crime besties See everyone.

1:38:42 Bye. OK, so here comes Peter's

1:39:01 favorite part of the day. When we do this flat oh, and we

1:39:05 don't judge it, but we don't do it together.

1:39:07 Is that right? We.

1:39:09 Do 1 separately. Correct you go first.

1:39:11 There you go. No, you go.

1:39:14 Oh God, I got caught up. Shit clap.

1:39:18 That was a real shit clap. Can't get.

1:39:22 Anything right tonight? Oh yeah.

1:39:24 All right. Are we ready?

1:39:26 I think so. OK, who's gonna start?

1:39:29 Oh, you do it. OK, Go for it, Elizabeth.